Department of Public Health - Acute Communicable Disease Control

Note: PDF documents on this site were created using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later. If you are using an earlier version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (4.x or less), document functionality may be reduced.

Hospital Outreach Unit and Healthcare Associated Infections

Mission:

To enhance emerging infectious disease preparedness and response efforts and improve hospital disease reporting by hospitals in Los Angeles County through strengthened communications, collaborations, and consolidation of resources.

This unit assists hospitals with outbreak investigations, consults on infection control issues, and enhances communication with hospitals by interacting with infection control practitioners, emergency departments and laboratories.

In 2005, the most common cause of reported hospital outbreaks continued to be scabies. This was followed in number by outbreaks of Clostridium difficile enteritis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus areaus (MRSA) infections. In 2005, two high profile outbreaks occurred. The first, in January, was an outbreak of Serratia marcescens associated with cardio-thoracic surgery. A joint CDC investigation revealed the most likely source of infection as contaminated magnesium sulfate solution. The other outbreak involved MRSA infection and was associated with a hospital burn unit. Upon CDC laboratory analysis and review of the MRSA PFGE pattern, it was determined that the outbreak isolate was a unique Brazilian clone never before seen in LAC and rarely seen in the US. This Brazilian clone is the most common type of MRSA in parts of South America and has been reported in Hungary and Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and the Czech Republic—but aside from the LAC event, only one other report of this strain causing an outbreak exists in the US. More detailed summaries of these investigations can be found in the Special Reports 2005 section.

In 2005, the most common outbreaks in skilled nursing and other sub-acute health facilities were due to scabies and gastroenteritis, similar to previous years. From 2004-2005, LAC experienced a dramatic increase in the number of reported scabies outbreaks in both acute care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. The overall number of reported healthcare outbreaks has been steadily increasing over the last five years. Additional review of hospital outbreaks and investigations are available in ACDC’s 2005 Morbidity Report. The Hospital Outreach Unit, a core feature of ACDC’s continued outreach to the healthcare community, continues to enhance communication and outbreak reporting between health facilities and Public Health.

Areas of Interest